


we're hell raising (and we don't need saving)

by sibley (ferns)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Better Than Canon, Bisexual Characters, Dystopia-ish, Earth-2, Episode: s02e13 Welcome to Earth-2, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jewish Characters, Metahuman Persecution, Multi, Open Relationships, Racism, Trans Characters, Transphobia, the racism & transphobia tags are in reference to past events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 14:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12772881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Cynthia goes home and destroys her apartment in frustration and thinks about the quadruply persecuted blood running through her veins.Thinks about the scarlet energy that’s started bubbling at her fingertips.Thinks about Francisco. About her parents. About the fucked up world they live in.Cynthia thinks about Harrison Wells and her eyes glow crimson.





	we're hell raising (and we don't need saving)

**Author's Note:**

> If you like Harry Wells I'd recommend steering clear of this. This is an anti-Wells fic and I am an anti-Wells person. The T rating is also a...very high T in my opinion. All sexual content is implied and not graphic but it still happens and there's a ton of violence. Alina Serban is still playing Cindy.
> 
> 'World Gone Mad' by Bastille is the official song of this universe, although it's not where the title comes from.

Cynthia meets Francisco while they’re both seventeen. He’s running because he just accidentally shoved some rich white guy into a wall when the guy stepped out of the shadows to put out his cigarette and scared the hell out of the scrawny kid under the streetlight and he’s probably called the cops by now with a story about Francisco mugging him at knifepoint. She’s running because she’s late for dinner and _needs_ to get there before it gets too dark.

They don’t know that that’s how they met. It was too dark and they passed each other heading in opposite directions on the streets of Detroit. But that little moment of passing, the tiny nod they shared with each other, has ripples.

Years later when they meet properly, Francisco posing as a tech mogul and Cynthia the detective who has been on his trail for over a month and has tracked him down at this fancy gathering at Wayne Manor, there’s a dance to it. A recognition of _you’re like me,_ in the kind of way that only two people who have both rejected the boxes people have tried to put them in can recognize each other. She fails to arrest him that night, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depending on how you look at it) and her partner at the time dares to suggest that it was because she’s not competent because of the ‘upbringing’ he thinks that she had and she almost punches his teeth down his throat.

Francisco falls head over heels in love with her immediately, but has to move to Central City not long afterwards. Dante comes with him, discovering a bar and attaching himself to a pretty blond PI that frequents it. Francisco ignores his older brother’s life for the most part. He doesn’t care about whatever hot boy Dante’s going out with this week. He’s just glad that in Central City, he can have a new life. Oh, he’ll still be a criminal, of course, but it’s a whole fresh set of targets. A place where nobody gives him any strange looks. Not yet, at least.

Cynthia gets taken off his case at her request and is transferred to Central City not long afterwards. Detective West-it’s-fine-if-you-call-me-Iris gives her a warm welcome and invites her over to the house she shares with her husband for dinner, which Cynthia accepts only to be polite. It’s a little awkward because she hardly knows them, but they don’t give her any strange looks for the rasp of her voice and how she stumbles over certain words. Cynthia thinks that if she weren’t clearly in a happy marriage, Detective West would be someone that she’d like to get to know in a romantic way.

Somehow, they meet again, and this time they kiss. Cynthia’s off duty and Francisco is asking if he can press his warm soft lips against hers and she’s saying yes because why wouldn’t she, nobody has to find out about this.

He thinks he’s stolen her wallet but when he checks to see if that’s true a few blocks away, he finds that she’s stolen his instead right along with his heart.

* * *

The first time Cynthia and Francisco have sex, they’re both twenty-three years old in a cheap hotel room in Coast City that Francisco paid for with Dante’s money. Sex doesn’t equal feelings and feelings don’t equal sex and somehow, Cynthia realizes while she’s lying on her back waiting for Francisco to get out of the bathroom, she’s pretty sure she just fell in love.

“I’m gonna take over the world one day,” Francisco whispers in her ear while she’s sitting on his lap, nose buried in his neck, and she believes him wholeheartedly. “I’m going to take over the world one day and it’s going to be _perfect.”_

“Not if I take it over first,” she hisses back just to be competitive. “Who knows. Maybe I only seduced you in the first place for your power.”

They stop kissing when he starts tickling her ribs and she laughs too loudly in his ear and they don’t have sex again that day and that’s okay. They don’t need to. This is good. For a few years, it’s good.

They’re not _together-_ together, not really. That’s fine. They don’t need to be. At the end of the day, no matter how many other partners the two of them have had and will have, infamous hacker and criminal Francisco Ramon is always going to end up in bed underneath her, Detective Cynthia Reynolds of the CCPD.

Or at least, that’s how it is until Harrison Wells’ machine explodes and Cynthia’s world turns red.

The day that Wells’ watches debut, she’s fired from the CCPD. They say it’s because she tampered with evidence. Cynthia, who _knows_ she’s a good cop and a good person, knows it’s really because all of those pretty little watches beeped when they got close to her.

Cynthia goes home and destroys her apartment in frustration and thinks about the quadruply persecuted blood running through her veins.

Thinks about the scarlet energy that’s started bubbling at her fingertips.

Thinks about Francisco. About her parents. About the fucked up world they live in.

Cynthia thinks about Harrison Wells and her eyes glow crimson.

She gets a call from Francisco three days later and he tells her that he saw she was fired on the news. She’s on a _list_ now. Cynthia snaps at him that she knows that and that both of her parents are worried sick for a thousand reasons that she can’t even name right now because she’s so worked up-she tries to calm herself. Asks if that’s the only reason he called her.

There’s a long pause. “No,” Francisco says, voice fuzzy over the phone. “I was affected by the accelerator too. That’s what did it, you know. Wells’ particle accelerator. It just came out. Dante was affected too. It _changed_ us. Which is why we need to talk in person. Meet me at our usual place? Please?”

“Oh, thank _god,”_ Cynthia whispers, because _finally_ she can talk to someone that she loves who will understand what’s happening to her, and hangs up the phone.

She looks at the TV. At the cheerful anchorwoman talking about a potential public metahuman registry, so that everyone will know who was given powers.

Something deep inside of Cynthia snaps and a dark hot knot of anger starts growing in her chest. Registry. Harrison Wells. The watches. Metahumans. Powers.

They’re saying metahumans are a menace to society. That they need the list of all known metahumans to stay current and updated and public so that people will know who to avoid. Who not to hire. Who to evict. Who not to love. Ignoring the fact that they’re almost all innocent people who got caught up in something that they can’t control. That who _cares_ who they were before they got twisted like this. It’s what they are now that matters. Even if ‘what they are now’ is scared people trying to make sense of the world they’ve woken up in where they can do extraordinary things and society hates them for it.

If they say metahumans are a menace to society, then she’ll _give_ them ‘menace to society’. If that’s what they want, she’ll give it to them. They brought this on _themselves._

* * *

“So,” Cynthia says casually, straddling Reverb’s waist with her fingers laced together around his neck. “How’ve you been?”

He pulls her closer. “Pretty good. Had to kill Light a few days ago when Hoshi told me what he tried to do to her. I made sure it was _excruciatingly_ painful.”

Cynthia’s lip curls up in disgust. “Oh, I would’ve loved to see that. I hope you let Hoshi join in, at least?”

“Of course.” Reverb kissed her. “She took his costume and she’s going to take his place soon. New and improved Doctor Light.”

“And what does Zoom think of that?” Cynthia wrinkles her nose. As far as she’s concerned, Zoom might as well not exist. He doesn’t acknowledge her and she doesn’t acknowledge him and that’s just how it is. Even if all three of them know that the only reason he even recruited Francisco-recruited _Reverb_ in the first place is because he thought that he would be an easily containable way to keep Cynthia indirectly under his control.

“I doubt he even notices, to be honest,” Reverb laughs. “He relies on me to keep the others in line. How I do that and _who_ I’m keeping in line doesn’t seem to matter to him unless it’s someone high profile like Frost or Siren.”

“Hmm.” Cynthia’s not exactly jealous of either of them-Frost has Deathstorm and Siren’s one of the many people outside of Reverb who _she’s_ had something with-but the more information she has about the current state of Zoom’s army, the better. “You should come back. Join us. We’ve been much more profitable than some goblin wearing black who thinks _Zoom_ is an intimidating name.”

Reverb smiles at her, the Francisco he was before the explosion shining through. He presses his nose against her jaw, humming to himself a little bit. “I’ve missed this. Missed _you_ even more.”

“I know you have.” Saying that she missed him too would be true, but… That’s not how they operate. Even this is too public for her tastes, too open to show this kind of genuine affection that isn’t based on lust but on real emotion. “You don’t need to say it.”

“Oh, but you like hearing it,” Reverb whispers. He’s right about that. She _does_ like hearing it. She loves hearing it. He tugs a little at the zipper on the front of her leather jacket and fake pouts when she moves his hand off of it. Cynthia trusts him enough not to put his hand back. She denied him and he’s going to listen to that. “God, you’re beautiful.”

Cynthia kisses him again. “We should probably get going,” she says reluctantly. “One of your crew will be here for cleanup.”

He sighs as she gets up off him, following her to his feet. “It’d probably be weird if we kept making out next to dead bodies anyway.”

Cynthia looks at the corpses around them on the floor of the warehouse. “Mm.” She kicks out a little and bumps the metal toe of her boot against the hand of one of them. “I think I used to know this guy. He refused to work with me because I was-well. I don’t really know. I think he was just mad I wouldn’t sleep with him.” She allows herself a brief but savage grin. “I wish I could’ve seen you kill him.”

“I wish you could’ve seen it too. He screamed so loudly I thought his vocal cords were going to split.” Reverb winds their fingers together for a brief moment before stepping away with a sigh. He snapped his fingers and a breach opened at his fingertips. “You could come home with me, you know. Tonight. Just this once.”

“I could,” Cynthia agrees. “But we both know that it wouldn’t just be _‘once’_ if I did.”

She opens her own breach and steps through it, smiling as it closes behind her. She loves Reverb, undeniably and wholey so. Zoom can use that and both of them know it. But he won’t, as long as her Francisco keeps on playing the part of loyal attack dog. Keeps on acting like doesn’t know he could rip apart every single one of Zoom’s army in a heartbeat like they’re nothing more than wet tissue paper.

Cynthia sits down on her bed and shrugs off her jacket, tossing it over one of the chairs in her bedroom. While she’s got a little bit of dramatic flair (okay, a lot of dramatic flair), it’s not as much as someone like Black Siren, much less Reverb. And her flair comes from her attacks and her entrances and exits, not from her outfit. A leather jacket over a white shirt, steel-toed combat boots, and black pants may make her less physically imposing than someone like Frost or Deathstorm, but nobody is going to be paying attention to her costume while she’s blasting their body to pieces.

One of Reverb’s toys is sitting on her nightstand when she gets out of the shower and she frowns. Cynthia’s certain that it wasn’t there before, which means that asshole breached into her apartment while she was showering. He’s gotten better at passing through undetected by her.

She picks it up and turns it over in her hands. It’s tiny and rectangular and looks like it has a small pin on one side so she can attach it to a jacket. Cynthia frowns deeper. There’s no obvious use for it, and Cisco didn’t leave a note. Oddly enough, it vibrates similarly to the way that Wells’ watches do. In an almost… Inverted fashion, if that’s even possible. But it’s not beeping like one of the watches would if it was this close to a metahuman like Cynthia.

Cynthia furrows her eyebrows and curls her fingers around it. Reverb doesn’t do things without reason, even when he’s around her. It’s one of his more irritating qualities that he thinks everything through forward and backward before he does it. Sometimes planning ahead is good. Other times, thinking too much can get you hurt. Rushing in blind isn’t always smart, but if you have the element of surprise you need to take it. That’s something Cynthia’s always understood better than Reverb has. She’s pretty sure she gets it from her father.

It takes her a whole day to figure out what Reverb’s little gift is. Which means she’s getting slow. If Cynthia needs an _example_ to prove what something does instead of figuring it out on her own, that means she’s getting rusty.

Usually when Reverb gives her a gift, he wants her to wear them. Not like he’s marking her as his, which was something she accused him of back when they first met and didn’t know what to make of each other outside of the mirrored attraction. He knows she doesn’t _belong_ to anybody except herself, much less to Reverb. He likes it when she wears the gifts because it makes him feel better, feel _useful,_ feel like she’s safer than she would be normally because of something he’s done.

So she attaches this little toy to her jacket and goes out.

Central City is split fairly cleanly down the middle. There’s the ‘good’ side of town, where everyone owns watches and will call the police if you so much as look at someone funny, and the ‘bad’ side of town, where metahumans have safe haven and can at least try to blend in and be normal citizens. It’s a healthy mix of regular people and metahumans, the police don’t know enough about it to come there often, and all of it belongs to Cynthia.

Not that most people know that, of course. But everyone pays for her protection in one way or another. The metahuman bouncer outside their bar or the owner of the strip club they frequented… Those were her people. They’re hers and she’s not going to let that rich white bastard Wells hurt them again. He’s the one who got them fired, or got them disowned, or almost got them killed.

Cynthia feels a strange sense of protectiveness over every metahuman that Harrison Wells created. Except for Zoom. And the Flash. They can take care of themselves.

But even metahumans like Reverb and Black Siren and Killer Frost need someone watching out for them who’s outside of the organization. Who will give them a wing to hide under just in case they get on Zoom’s bad side one too many times and manage to make it to safety before they can get their heart shredded inside their chest.

This is their home. If they want it to be.

However, even on the safe side of town, the ‘bad’ side, there are still people who carry watches. Cynthia and the other metahumans have learned how to avoid them.

It’s easy to slip up.

Cynthia freezes as someone with a watch passes her, close enough that she can hear the person that they’re on the phone with.

Except… The sound never comes.

It only takes her a second to realize that she just found out what Reverb’s gift does.

Cynthia grins and straightens the ‘pin’ on her jacket and walks just a little bit more confidently.

If she knows Reverb, and she does, every metahuman in Central City will have one of these before the week is over.

Good. They’ve been under Wells’ heel for long enough.

* * *

“Ms. Maybeck?” Wells’ secretary, a tall woman with dark hair named Lacy Wen, says as she sticks her head in around the door to ‘Artemis Maybeck’s’ office. “There’s a woman here to see you. She says it’s important.”

Cynthia grits her teeth. One of her own wouldn’t dare try something like this, so it has to be Zoom. Nobody is supposed to know she’s here, and Reverb told her that he would keep everyone in Zoom’s crew off her trail for as long as he could, but… If one of them is here for her, this isn’t going to be pretty. Maybe she can spin it so they attacked her and she was left defenseless until another metahuman came along and killed them? Trick whatever meta is after her into taking out the security cameras and then destroy them and the room so there’s no evidence of what she did? It’ll bring Zoom down on her head, but-she can’t jeopardize this.

Cynthia’s been working three months to try to get close enough to Wells to put a not-so-metaphorical knife in his back. If one of Zoom’s idiot underlings is going to try to take that away from her-

But it’s Mari, not one of Zoom’s crew, waiting for her in the hall.

Ever the fashion icon, Mari’s wearing an orange dress with a few strategic cuts that Cynthia knows maximize Mari’s range of movement while limiting the amount of skin exposed. She’s clearly worried, shoulders tense and one hand pressing its knuckles nervously to the amulet resting on her collarbone. Thank god, she doesn’t look out of place here in STAR Labs. A model is an uncommon sight, but anybody who sees her will think she’s a sponsor of the lab.

She rushes to meet Cynthia halfway, taking her hands. “It’s nice to see you again,” she says softly. “It’s been too long.”

They saw each other last night. Black Siren came over too. Cynthia let the two women have their privacy while she cleaned up afterward and pretended not to hear the gasps and stifled moans coming from the next room. If there’s one thing Black Siren is good at outside of spreading mayhem, it’s showing a girl a good time. But Mari showing up here, where Cynthia’s trying to be undercover and using a fake name, and then acting like they haven’t seen each other in ages means something is _wrong._ Seriously wrong.

“It’s… Nice to see you again, too. What’s going on?” Cynthia asks, eyes cutting to where Lacy is pretending not to be listening in.

“There’s been something of a family emergency.” Mari’s eyes gleam a little. The tiny device nestled underneath the main piece of her necklace keeps her safe from the metahuman sensors in STAR Labs, but that doesn’t mean there’s not still lingering anxiety. Cynthia feels it gnawing at her insides every day. “Your brother was in an accident.”

Cynthia’s brother Evan died when he was seven years old. Something is very, very wrong.

Mari leans forward to kiss Cynthia’s cheek and whispers in her ear so softly she can hardly even feel her breath-“He found out.”

Ice slides down Cynthia’s spine. Zoom.

She numbly tells Lacy that she’s leaving early (she gets all the work she’s supposed to be doing here done at home where she has help anyway) and lets Mari lead her out to the car she arrived in. As soon as the doors are shut she turns to her friend and grabs her upper arm hard enough to leave bruises later. Mari doesn’t so much as flinch.

“Let go of me,” she says calmly, and Cynthia takes a deep breath before releasing her friend's arm.

“What _happened?”_ Cynthia hisses.

Mari starts driving. She doesn’t look at Cynthia but Cynthia doesn’t take her eyes off of her for a second. “Zoom must’ve found something out. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Deathstorm’s dead. Killer Frost is missing-alive, according to-to a witness, but missing. Zoom’s probably got her on a shorter leash now. We haven't been able to get into contact with her. He took out his anger over it on a lot of his lieutenants afterward, too. Some of them ran to us and they’re getting medical attention. And Reverb…” Mari swallows. “Cynthia…”

“Say it,” Cynthia demands. It won’t feel real until Mari says it.

Mari sighs. “Reverb’s dead.”

It hangs in the air between them.

Cynthia rips off her nametag and almost crushes the tiny STAR Labs logo in her hands. Her eyes glow scarlet and it bleeds down her face in threads under her skin. Mari doesn’t falter. Good. If she had, Cynthia would’ve kicked her out of the car.

“He’s not dead,” she says firmly, thinking about Francisco’s mouth on her neck and how he would beg her so sweetly to pull his hair harder and to be rougher, harder, more demanding. About him sitting on her back with his legs dangling off the side of the bed as he sketched out blueprints. About that hotel room and fingers tickling her ribs. “He’s not dead. This isn’t denial, Mari.” Maybe it is, a little. “I would’ve felt it if he’d died. We’re connected. Francisco’s not dead.”

It’s probably the first time Mari’s ever heard Reverb’s real name. She raises her eyebrows at this revelation and pulls up at the apartment complex that Cynthia’s turned into a fortress. Even if Wells and the police don’t know it, pretty much every metahuman in the city lives here. Or at least the ones who care enough about their own safety.

“Witness saw the body,” Mari says softly, squeezing Cynthia’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know-” She sighs. “I know you don’t _think_ I know how much you two meant to each other, but I do. I did.”

Cynthia swallows. Her facade is cracking. She _refuses_ to show this kind of weakness. She’s shown emotion in front of Mari before, but-she can’t right now. In front of anybody. She punches a breach open and steps through it and lands on her bed.

She doesn’t take off the clothes that she wears for ‘work’, not that she’s really getting paid to do paperwork for the metahuman power files that Wells is publicly keeping and making available to everyone. Cynthia keeps them as vague as possible and deleted as many as possible, including Francisco’s-she faked her own death a long time ago. Nobody’s looking for Cynthia Reynolds anymore.

She curls up on her side and hugs her knees to her chest. She’ll thank Mari tomorrow for bringing her home. And for telling her what happened. Cynthia’s glad she heard it from a friend and not a gloating police officer. Or from Zoom himself.

_Zoom._

It’s about time this war with him stopped being fought from the shadows. And it’s about time Wells paid for what he did.

It’s about time someone started a rebellion.

* * *

Cynthia pushes herself into her work. At least two thirds of Zoom’s lackeys are on her payroll as well, but that’s still too few. She needs all of them.

She hasn’t spoken to Dante yet. She doesn’t need to. He showed up a few hours after Mari drove her home in one of the downstairs apartments that have had the walls knocked out of them so they’re bigger and more of a communal space. Team bonding is important. As far as Cynthia knows, he’s still down there. When she saw him, she made sure not to comment on the blood on his gloves and the tiny scratched up gold band he was clinging to.

Francisco wasn’t the only one Dante lost to Zoom last night, and Cynthia has no idea how she’s supposed to handle that kind of situation.

Almost none of them have military level training outside of a few like Plastique and Adam. But they know how to fight. How to be lethal. It’s easy to bring the last of Zoom’s followers into her fold. A promise of power and a reminder of how easily Zoom killed Reverb and Deathstorm (and there are rumors that Killer Frost is dead now, too). A promise that she can protect them from him and a reminder of how powerful she is.

A few of them, the ones who know that she and Reverb shared their powers, ask how she’s going to be able to defeat Zoom if Reverb is already gone. If Zoom could kill Reverb, what’s stopping him from killing all of them, too?

To that, Cynthia bares her teeth in a feral smile. “I have a plan. Reverb was taken by surprise. That won’t happen to me. To _us.”_

She never tells them that Reverb could see the future. Everyone _suspected_ that ability was a part of their power set, but it was never confirmed. And she’s not about to tell them that and lose their support and power and most importantly of all their faith in her.

Reverb was always better at seeing the future than she was, but that changes now. Now, Cynthia spends most of her time alone in her room, absorbing multiversal energy in the same way that Reverb would. Peering into countless futures and realities. She takes a kind of pride in the ones where she and Francisco find each other in different ways throughout the multiverse.

Francisco is-was-hers. Always.

The plan to attack Zoom goes off without a hitch. At first. Black Siren lures Zoom to a warehouse just outside the badlands, telling him there’s a revolution growing in his ranks that she needs to discuss with him privately away from potential traitorous eavesdroppers. The net, metal barbs and power dampeners all controlled by Magenta who’s as far away as she can possibly be from Zoom in order to keep her and Frankie as safe as possible, wraps around him and pins him down. Zoom _screams_ in anger and starts vibrating before the dampeners whir to life. Behind the black suit and claws and blue lightning he’s just a man. A man who underestimated them.

Cynthia walks down into the pit to stand next to Zoom. Her hands burn red like they've been dipped in blood. She can feel the speedforce running in his veins, can feel the humming and vibrating of his bones. Cynthia lifts her hand and clenches it and watches Zoom’s body contort in response. “This is for-”

Her ears pop and someone so familiar it’s like a punch to the gut screams her name. “Cynthia, _look out-!”_

She twists as talons pierce into her jacket and carry her aloft, the vibrations lifting her into the air horribly familiar.

“You thought you could sway me with promises of power?” Someone she thought was on their side growls. “You don’t know me at _all.”_

“Traitor,” she spits, blasting Carter Hall so hard one of his wings is ripped clean from his spine. He screeches in pain and they plunge back to Earth as Cynthia spins him underneath her so that he takes the force of the fall. Something inside of him snaps and he dies instantly upon impact, scream abruptly cutting off as he slams into the ground. Cynthia’s lucky enough not to, but she’s sure one of her ribs is broken and there’s blood in her mouth. She tries to catch her breath.

“You underestimate my followers,” Zoom hisses as he stands, shedding the now-useless net, and fear pierces Cynthia’s heart as she remembers that Carter was supposed to be protecting Magenta. The one controlling the net, keeping him pinned and keeping the dampeners active. If Zoom is free and Carter was a traitor-if he killed _children_ just to kill her-

“You underestimate _me,”_ Cynthia spits back, trying to stand. But Carter’s claw-like nails are hooked into her skin and clothes, keeping her down. And none of her other followers are stepping in to help.

Probably because they’re too focused on the man standing behind Zoom that the monster hasn’t noticed yet.

Zoom pulls back one vibrating hand, and Cynthia knows he’s going to be too fast for her to match the frequency and save herself.

That’s okay. She doesn’t have to do that.

Zoom goes flying past her when a translucent blue blast smashes into him from behind, sending him sprawling and severing him from the speedforce semi-permanently.

Reverb gently helps her unhook Carter’s talons and frowns with concern at the blood on her lips. “Sorry I’m late.”

“You should be, you fucking asshole,” Cynthia says, lifting her chin. “You let us all think you were dead.”

He has the decency to look ashamed. Cynthia turns her back on him. There are a hundred emotions currently running through her right now alongside her adrenaline-fear, pain, hate, anxiety about the safety of Magenta, delight that Reverb is alive-so she focuses on her most productive one.

Anger.

She stands over Zoom, bloody and proud, and smiles viciously down at him. No triumphant last words. Zoom doesn’t deserve them.

She clenches her fingers and twists her wrist.

There’s a sickening _crunch_ sound.

Cynthia bends down to pull Zoom’s mask off his head and tosses it to Black Siren, who catches it and grins.

“The king is dead,” Reverb murmurs, looking at Cynthia and grinning. He’s never seen anything more beautiful than her, standing in the darkness with her eyes glowing red, blood that looks black dripping down her chin from her mouth. “Long live the queen.”

* * *

Harrison Wells dies choking on his own blood in the middle of begging them for mercy, bones in his neck bursting from his skin while his nervous system shatters inside of him.

Cynthia and Francisco enjoy every second of it. Mari drinks wine that’s the same color as the blood pooling on the floor, one hand resting gently on Jesse Wells’ shoulder. She’s watching her father be slaughtered with a pale face, her fingers clenched. The dampening band around her throat disguised as a necklace that her father forces her to wear to keep up appearances that he has a _normal,_ non-speedster daughter has been broken.

Apparently, Wells’ famous love for his only child was highly conditional.

Jesse moves in with Mari and an (alive but still recovering) Frankie Kane soon after. She wants no reminders of her father, but someone needs to do something about the empty STAR Labs building and Jesse always was business-minded when she wanted to be. Besides, it’s about time Central City got itself a new Flash that _wasn’t_ secretly moonlighting as the would-be conqueror of the Gems.

Mari says Jesse is a nice young woman who can’t possibly be related to Wells. That she doesn’t smell much like him either, past the layer that comes with living with someone for a long time. And that maybe they have a case of a secret adoption on their hands. Cynthia rolls her eyes and thinks about how insufferable Cobalt Blue is going to be once he finds out that there’s another person with powers raised by a family that could have chosen to help and love them and decided not to because of some perceived flaw.

Central falls to them, with Keystone surrendering soon after.

Well, maybe _falls_ isn’t the right word. ‘Falls’ implies a mass takeover

Instead, the watches are outlawed by Mayor Snart, with a little bit of mental push from a little girl named Zazzala who Mari found living alone on a bee farm during one of her trips to find more metahumans in need of a sanctuary. There’s no need for Reverb’s deflecting tech anymore. Snart says he won’t run for mayor again with another push from Zazzala, that he’ll step down for good at the end of his term. That’s all they ask her to do. She’s just a child, barely eleven years old, she doesn’t need to know how to tamper with the more intricate parts of the human brain.

Cynthia and Reverb won’t run either, of course, but Mari’s considering trying her hand at it, and she’s confident that she can get more support (especially from metahumans) than Snart’s little sister, who’s stated that she’s planning on running. And if Mari decides not to, Angelique says it’s time she hung up her wings and went back to being plain old Kendra Saunders. Metaphorically, at least. She’s one of the metahumans who couldn’t hide even with Reverb’s tech. One of the ones with physical modifications brought on by the accelerator. But with Carter a dead traitor… She’s been looking for something else to do. And a visibly metahuman mayor will do this city good.

The mayor of Keystone is already secretly a metahuman. There’s no replacing to be done there.

But no matter who wins, as long as it isn’t Lisa Snart, Cynthia will get the power. Reverb, too, since it’s hard for her to say no to him when it comes to things like that, but mostly her. The police are already under her thumb, with a few well-placed metahuman CSIs. Whatever she doesn’t directly control, Reverb does.

And now that they have their place at the very top of the food chain, they’re benign rulers. They want their people _safe,_ not fighting and dying. Central is up and running again within a month after Wells dies, with Jesse set to tear down STAR Labs and rebuild it as Quickstart Enterprises. She’s a bright girl. She’ll go far.

Killer Frost was buried beside Deathstorm in an unmarked grave by Zoom, so they don’t know where the corpses are, but they have a little service for them even though Reverb and Cynthia fumble through it (Zatanna leads, since she's known Frost and Mari since high school) because Frost was… Something _not_ Jewish and Ronnie was raised Catholic. They can pull it together for Stein, at least, since those rites are familiar.

Black Siren's reputation isn’t going anywhere. Cynthia lets her continue her crime spree-as long as it’s not in Central City. Last she heard, Siren was headed for Gotham to meet up with her online girlfriend.

Dante leaves Central City too. Says that he can’t handle the stress of two people he loves dying on the same day only for one of them to be alive but not the other. Reverb lets him leave. Cynthia pretends not to see his mask cracking later that night when they’re alone together. Pretends not to hear him get up in the middle of the night and cry when he thinks she’s asleep. Cynthia doesn’t tell him she heard him even though he’s sure he noticed her. The relationship that Reverb has with his older brother is strange. She’s not going to judge.

“You know,” Cynthia says, curling her fingers around Reverb’s as they sit on the roof of STAR Labs together, the last time they’ll be able to do it since it’s set for demolition tomorrow, “I didn’t think we’d make it this far. I thought they’d execute me long before that. Thought one of Wells’ watches would ding and I’d just be-that’d be it for me. Or for you. I thought we’d be the ones dead. Not him.”

Reverb smiles as the lights of the city reflect onto his face. “People like us have always been good at surviving, haven’t we?”

“I guess we have.” Cynthia smiles back. She rests her head on his shoulder. “I don’t forgive you for faking your death and not telling me. I don’t know if I ever will.”

“That’s okay.” He squeezes her hand tightly. “The city looks beautiful from up here.”

“It does,” she agrees. “Beautiful and _ours.”_

Zoom and Harrison Wells are dead. Long live the king and queen of the Gem Cities.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my 50th work on this site...nice.


End file.
